Give Me My Sin Again

Some RPGs make you feel godly by battling big bosses or making heady choices. In Divinity: Original Sin, it's about discovering how you affect the world. I realized the power at my disposal when I used my mage's rain spell to douse the flames afflicting a boat in the starting town of Cyseal. Piff, down went the flames and up went the cheering arms of the rescued sailors. No yellow question marks or blathering NPCs bid me do it; it simply seemed like a good idea at the time. And praise the sun, it was. That's the kind of rewarding experimentation that lies at the heart of Divinity: Original Sin. Discovering how its many complex pieces interact with each other and how its complex and amazing spell system can be used to your advantage is what keeps it going for the majority of its outstanding 60-ish hours of questing.​

Despite the name, originality in the fundamental style of roleplaying gameplay doesn’t appear to have been a priority here; developer Larian Studios seems to have concerned itself more with skillfully stoking the flames of nostalgia. Divinity: Original Sin is the kind of game I briefly expected to play when I heard Overhaul Games was making an enhanced version of Baldur's Gate a couple of years back, as it coats the same type of experience that got me hooked on the digital incarnations of Gary Gygax's Dungeons & Dragons legacy with rich, modern graphics and contemporary relevance. It's all here, from the top-down perspective as you follow four adventurers from above like Warhammer pieces on a tabletop, to turn-based combat and the clunky menus that seemingly require more skill that it takes to wield a sword. As someone with fond memories of those RPGs, that alone would make Original Sin an eyecatching game.

Fortunately, it's more than that. Take the overarching story of two "Source hunters" tracking down the dastardly fiends who dabble in "Sourcery." (I know Terry Pratchett was using the term way back during the heydey of Super Mario Bros. 3, but it still sounds like one of the more forced attempts to wring some freshness of out the terminology of conventional high fantasy.) Much as in big-budget roleplaying peers such as Skyrim or Mass Effect, the overarching plot revolving around (of course) saving the world never entirely smothers the experience of side activities, and you'll even find the occasional joke worming its way into the heady stuff. It's a safe route that perhaps escapes the demands of living up to the storytelling quality of a game like Planescape: Torment, but Original Sin's writers are competent enough to make the direction work well.

Much of the appeal of Original Sin's scattered quests stems from the way Larian peppers them with humor and subtle pop-culture references, along with little tidbits of conflict with NPCs sprinkled into the responses for the text-based pop-up responses to quests. These conflicts are almost always resolved with a virtual game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, and they provide a welcome diversion when the two main characters are allowed to bicker over the merits of their actions in a key quest (particularly when you're in charge of controlling both of them). Sometimes these little spats give stat boosts or disposition gains, but they're most effective in the online cooperative mode as a means of injecting some roleplay into the experience aside from the combat and swapping items between the two heroes.

Quests themselves are well-written adventures dealing with conflicts like ancient blood feuds and racial tensions. Do you, for example, help an elf whose family was murdered by orcs kill an innocent descendent of the vicious orc tribe, try to talk him out of it, or fool him into leaving by either faking the orc’s death or stealing an amulet as proof you killed her? Divinity: Original Sin’s quests are full of these kinds of great moral choices, and most of them have two or more possible outcomes that really made me feel like I had control over the fate of the characters. Combat is where Divinity: Original Sin shakes off its mantle of tradition and comes into its own. There's a faint echo of Magicka in its heavily use of various spell and elemental combinations for devastating effects, but Larian distinguishes itself by working that system into almost every moment of combat to create opportunities for crowd control and environmental advantages that demand some brainwork even on the easiest of the three difficulty modes. My trick with the rain merely showed that system at its simplest; future encounters rarely let you get off so easily. You might have to dispel a poison cloud with a flame spell, then drench the flames with another blast of the rain spell to clear the way. Sometimes plans can backfire, such as when I discovered that I'd accidentally thrown a shock spell at an enemy who was standing in a puddle that extended under my own feet. Oops. And get this: all the enemies can use these same spell combinations against you. It's a clever tactical dynamic that manages to keep every encounter fresh and memorable, even after many hours.

I did have a rough time figuring the combat system out over the first 10 hours of play, to say nothing of other unexpected tricks such as using a spell to burn down locked doors instead of wearing down a weapon's durability by hacking at them. There’s a tutorial covering the basics, but the rest of Divinity: Original Sin is characterized by some of the most brazen lack of hand-holding this side of Dark Souls.

That creates some annoying questing issues that, while they certainly didn’t ruin my enjoyment, do need to be mentioned. Sometimes the key to one quest lies in another, and the scant quest journal rarely alludes to such overlaps. At times the awkward inventory, which demands constant juggling of items between four team members, adds to the confoundment. At least twice I didn't realize I already had the proper quest object because it was in the inventory of character who wasn't currently in conversation. When your party's carrying an object that's akin to the Holy Grail, you'd think the bearer would at least have the gumption to announce it. I spent embarrassing swaths of time in Original Sin just trying to figure out what to do next. At the same time, I liked how not everything was spelled out for me. [Minor mechanical spoiler] When I discovered that you can pilfer a house of its valuables by using one of your party members to distract the owner in conversation while another steals, it was fantastic. [End minor spoiler.] In fact, setting aside the issues with the inventory and the occasional vague quest objective, the challenge of learning Original Sin's systems was a big part of why I enjoyed it. It compelled me to think about my actions and choices, which is more than I usually get to say about contemporary RPGs. Since the option for a skill reset doesn't appear until late in the campaign, I had to stop and start several times before I settled on two Source hunters that were well suited for confronting the occasional extreme challenges I’d run into on the previous attempt. It was all grueling work that set me days behind schedule, but it was deliciously satisfying when the pieces finally started falling into place.

Though Original Sin’s now out of its extended Early Access beta, there are a few holes that Larian is still working to fill, such as the absence of named and voiced followers besides the warrior and mage you pick up in the first town. But this is one of those games that'll probably gain a degree of immortality itself from the community itself, as it comes equipped with extensive modding capabilities that will allow players to craft their own adventures for the Source hunters. But it's a credit to what Larian has accomplished here that those tools don't feel as essential for Original Sin's longevity as they do for some lesser RPGs.

The Verdict

Divinity: Original Sin is one of the most rewarding RPGs to come along in years. Its quests and combat compelled me to think hard about my actions and choices, which is more than I usually get to say about contemporary RPGs. Its depth, personality, and combat challenges easily allow it to hold its own against the likes of heavyweights like Dragon Age: Origins. These systems invite constant experimentation throughout dozens of memorable hours of combat and cheeky storytelling, and its rich modding toolkit provides the framework for enjoyable player-made adventure for years to come.